Conventionally, a user (to be referred to as an owner hereinafter) who wants to exhibit image data such as still images and motion images to the public or to share the image data with other users uses a service by which he or she forms an album in an album site of a Web server, uploads and registers the image data in the album, and allows access of the album to a number of specific users (to be referred to as guests hereinafter), thereby sharing the image data by the owner and the guests.
The owner can designate an image file to be uploaded and upload the image file by dragging and dropping a plurality of image data for each file in a predetermined window displayed on browser software installed in his or her personal computer (PC).
On the other hand, the owner often arranges a plurality of image data by using directories and folders on the hard disk drive (HDD) of his or her own PC. For example, it is a common practice to form a folder named “2003 Athletic Meeting”, and collectively manages image data related to the 2003 athletic meeting in this folder.
Assume that, under the circumstances as described above, the owner wants to show, to the guests, image files arranged in a PC folder named “2003 Spring Picnic” by using the Web album.
The owner first connects to the album site provided by the Web server which services the Web album, and selects an album to which the image data is to be uploaded. If there is no such album as “2003 Spring Picnic”, the owner must form an album having this name on the Web server before album selection.
After that, the owner designates the image data in the folder named “2003 Spring Picnic”, and uploads the designated image data to the Web server, thereby registering the image data in the album named “2003 Spring Picnic”.
That is, the owner has already formed a folder named “2003 Spring Picnic” on the HDD of his or her PC and arranged the image data in this folder. To register these image data in the Web album on the network, however, the owner must form a Web album, set the album name by inputting the character string “2003 Spring Picnic” again, register the image data, and set additional attribute information.
Naturally, the owner must upload image data for each album. Therefore, when the owner wants to form a large number of albums, even an album name input operation alone is very troublesome.
In addition, if the owner wants to show the registered image data to the guests, he or she must set, for each album, a list of these guests to whom the image data is to be accessible. Accordingly, if the number of albums increases and at the same time the number of guests to whom these albums are to be accessible increases, the owner may make a number of mistakes by which he or she designates an originally unwanted person as a guest to whom his or her album is to be accessible.